Adding another HD/memory to G3 tower Power PC to run programs smoothly.

[MacUser4Life]

I have a Power Mac G3 series tower cpu and I want to add another HD and RAM to the tower in order to run programs like premier, photoshop, final cut pro .. Etc. I was wondering how much more I could pack into the CPU. 

Currently there is 640Mb of memory and an 8.57GB HD (with 2.8GB) available.

Any ideas if, and what, I might need to have lotsa space to run these programs smoothly?  I am already looking into storing actual multimedia projects onto external hard drives and networked via ethernet cables around the studio. So I'm just worried about the programs "chugging along" when in use.

Thanks.

MU4L

[MacMoore]

You could replace your 128mb stick of ram with a 256mb one that would get your ram up to the maximum of 768mb which would give you slightly better performance with your 233 to 333MHz processor.
You don't mention whether your 9GB HD is ATA or SCSI.  Your could install two 120GB ATA (a.k.a. PATA or IDE) hard drives to give you more storage, but that won't speed things up.  You will " have lotsa space" , but that won't help "run these programs smoothly".

[MacUser4Life]

Hmmmm ... ok, thanks for thie info. :)  I'll check on the ATA / SCSI thing.

[Neil Herber]

There are cases where a new hard drive can speed things up.

For example, if the spindle speed (or rotational speed) is higher on the new drive, access times are faster. Also, newer drives tend to have larger caches that can speed up transfers. Plus, if your current drive(s) is (are) nearly full or badly fragmented, the system can spend a lot of time just moving the heads to store the file. A new big empty drive will be faster. All this assumes that the internal bus can handle the data rate that a feaster drive provides.

But in terms of "noticeable" speed up, more RAM will probably make the biggest difference.